Tag: Mystery

“A mighty fine, meandering Western” ~ Kirkus ReviewsPatrick Smithwick, Author of Flying Change: A Year of Racing and Family and Steeplechasing and Racing My Father: Growing Up with a Riding Legend: “Reading The Mule Tamer reminded me of the same adrenalin-pumping experience I had when watching the TV mini-series Lonesome Dove. Every night after dinner, I looked forward to the next episode of Larry McMurtry’s novel, and every night I did not want it to end. Indeed, I can see The Mule Tamer’s Arvel Walsh being played by Robert Duvall and Dick Welles being played by Tommy Lee Jones. On the other hand, many of the sharply, crisply written scenes – whether of shoot-outs, killings, drug-induced deliriums, or lust – brought back memories from Cormac McCarthy’s Border Trilogy which began with All the Pretty Horses.Being a painstakingly researched novel, some of its most graphically etched scenes taken right out of the pages of 1890’s newspapers, The Mule Tamer will interest readers of historical novels as well as of American history. Also, all of us who love classic Western movies will be drawn to the challenges facing Walsh and Welles. Yet, author John Horst has set his sights higher than the creating of a stereotypical and rehashed Western plot. Walsh not only embodies the classic traits of a Western hero – he’s stoic, laconic, an excellent marksman, has a mysterious and tragic past, and is desirable by a young, sexy, fast-shooting, hard-riding, free-spirited woman – Walsh is also introspective, a character who changes and develops as he searches for answers to the questions in his life.In a tight situation, Chica – a wonderfully drawn female gunslinger based on a true figure of the West – does not think twice before pulling the trigger, and you shouldn’t either: click instantly on the link to The Mule Tamer and buy this book.”Arvel Walsh can tame mules, but can he tame the wild Arizona frontier, and the Mexican girl known as Chica, as wild and unpredictable as the land she roams? Arizona in 1892 is the last of the untamed country in America. Laws are hard to enforce and bad hombres know it. Texas pushed them out of their land with the famous Texas Rangers, can Arizona do the same? Challenged by savage bandits, psychotic serial killers, and anarchists, Arvel Walsh and Dick Welles will have to summon all their knowledge, and all their guts as veterans of the Civil War to make the fledgling Arizona Rangers a force to be reckoned with. Follow the men as they ride across the deserts and through the arroyos of southern Arizona, encountering dangers, a mystical aborigine, a severed head in a bottle, and side show freaks while discovering that heroes may be found in the most unlikely places, and that a certain beautiful and unpredictable woman may very well be the key to their success and their salvation, in more ways than one.

“Alcohol Was Not Involved” FBI Special Agents Roger Dance and Paul Casey are faced with the worst case of their careers. Beautiful women are missing. Some are showing up weeks later next to busy highways in broad daylight. Dead, strangled, and dumped, like trash. Some are being held captive, prisoners, and starved to death. None of the traditional rules of profiling seem to apply, and the body count keeps growing. * Four friends die in an auto accident only to discover that Heaven has decided to make them ‘special’ Angels, whose purpose is to help mortals do good. Faced with learning their new Angel skills at the same time they accept their first assignment, to help Roger and Paul catch the murderer, the Angels find themselves somewhat torn between their mortal attributes and Angel rules. For Roger and Paul (and the FBI) law enforcement will never be the same.Book tags: New Mystery, suspense, thriller, humor, police, crimes, New OrleansBook One: Alcohol Was Not InvolvedBook Two: Extreme Heat WarningBook Three: Silent CricketsNEW RELEASE: “CATAHOULA”

The FIRST offbeat mystery in the TUBBY DUBONNET series, by Anthony- and Edgar-nominated author Tony Dunbar.

If a gym bag of cash fell into your hands, what would you do to keep it?

A simple man with a refined palate, maverick New Orleans lawyer Tubby Dubonnet has a penchant for fishing, Old Fashioneds, off-track betting, and fighting evil while passing a good time.

His clients are all renegades from the asylum (aka Orleans Parish), including a transvestite entertainer, a buxom deadbeat blonde, a doctor who refers his own patients to a malpractice lawyer, and a Mardi Gras reveler who drives a float shaped like a giant crawfish pot. He also has his hands full with an ex-wife and three teenage daughters, who are experts in the art of wrapping Tubby around their little fingers. And somehow, between work and family, Tubby finds time to sample the highs and lows of idiosyncratic Crescent City cuisine, from trout meuniere amandine and French roast coffee with chicory to shrimp po-boys and homemade pecan pralines.

Tubby’s new client is Darryl Alvarez, the manager of a local nightclub who’s been caught unloading marijuana from a shrimp boat. At their first meeting, Darryl entrusts Tubby with an ordinary-looking blue gym bag. But after Darryl’s unfortunate demise, Tubby realizes he must tighten his grasp on the gym bag — and its million-dollar contents.

Tubby can’t just give up the cash. But if he gets caught, he’ll be in jail. And if the wrong people catch him, he’ll wish he was.

Excerpt:
The pain that said he was drinking too much started creeping up behind Tubby’s ears. Raisin Partlow, his drinking buddy, had given up trying to make conversation with him and was puffing on a cigarette in the exaggerated way that irregular smokers do. The dusty, barely lit tavern was thinning out, leaving just a few whiskered pool players chalking up a last game and a pair of busty girls sharing confidences with the even heftier dame behind the bar.

“Never screw a client and never lie to the judge,” Tubby said abruptly.

It took Raisin a second to break through to the surface.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“That’s all of the so-called legal ethics that make sense to me. The rest of it is just so many little rules you can twist around to suit whatever you want to do.”

“Well, you know, Tubby, I lied to a judge just last week.” Raisin expelled a wobbly smoke ring and smiled in satisfaction. “Old ‘Fuzzy’ Baer appointed me to represent the fool who shot a fourteen-year-old girl, after he raped her and her mother. He asks me, ‘Mr. Partlow, can you put aside your personal feelings and represent this man to the best of your goddamn abilities?’”

The bartender broke off her conversation to look in their direction. Tubby raised his fingers an inch off the scarred oak surface, so cool to the touch, and shook his head, no. The familiar pain of too much whiskey and too much sweet Coca-Cola had already spread over to the top of his skull.

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him, ‘Yes, Your Honor. The man deserves his day in court.’ I should have told him, ‘Fuck no, Judge. I hate this guy. Take him away where I don’t have to look at him. Christ, sir, I’ll be embarrassed to admit to my godchildren that I was even in the same room with the guy.’ But I knew that was the wrong answer to the question.”

“You should have told him the truth,” Tubby said.

“Like what?”

“You should have said, ‘Heck no, Judge. But I’ll do a better job than anybody else you’re likely to get.”

Raisin shrugged and waved at the bartender. Tubby slid off his stool and grabbed the bar for support.

There will be a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning. ~ Louis L’AmourThe place was a giant cesspool turned whirlpool that pulled all the badness of the land into it, until the vortex contained the giant soup of decadence and evil, contained the worst of human kind.But Hell Street has a new enforcer, a lawman who has honed his skill in Hell’s Kitchen, the meanest of the Five Points district of Manhattan. Will it be enough?Allingham is the story of one man’s struggle to face down his demons along with the meanest and most degenerate of human kind in the worst town in the last frontier of the West, Canyon Diablo, Arizona Territory.

Her deadly cancer in remission, thanks to a bone marrow transplant from the vampire king’s girlfriend, Annalise has survived her ordeal. When the Regime accuses her of violating their 1000-year-old laws, she finds herself face-to-face with another threat to her life and turns to the royal vampire family to help her. But, the Bugresson family has their own problems to deal with.

A Donnair Guard could reduce the Bugresson Princes to almost full human form and the Black Plague could kill them. But, Arthur wiped out the Donnair bloodline 400 years ago and the Plague is extinct, so there is no threat, right? Wrong!

Read Plague of Love, Book 2 of Healing the Regime Series, it will take you on a chilling adventure of love, betrayal, and death that will leave you wondering about your own mortality.

Please also check out the highly popular Book 1 in the Series. It is entitled ‘Christmas Healing’.

He’s a vampire who has been locked away for a thousand years in a coffin, finally freed. But the world has changed drastically during that time, and there are so many things that he’s not ready for. He hated being a vampire when it first happened, and he hates it now.

She’s barely 18, a young girl with terminal cancer, once the height of popularity. Chosen by another vampire clan to keep them “updated” in the world, her blood infected and not tempting to them, she is brought into his household to teach him, page by page, the modern world and how to live despite her inevitable death. With the Christmas season approaching, she teaches him that there is more to life than just living. There’s generosity and goodwill.

Although she has a boyfriend back home and he has no interest in living, slowly, a love and understanding blossoms between them that no one else can penetrate. A secret pact enfolds as her life force begins to fade.

Will he be able to grant her the greatest gift of all?

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Book 2 of Healing the Regime Series – Plague of Love – is now on Amazon.
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Summary of reader feedback on this paranormal series and paranormal romance kindle books for adults:

“..a charmer of a paranormal romance and paranormal books for teens.”

“..a great vampire romance and paranormal fantasy romance novel..”

“..characters and storyline are amazing in this paranormal vampire romance.”

“..paranormal humor and romance adds spice to this new adult and college romance…”

When the truth is your greatest danger, and the enemy knows the truth, things can only go downhill when the enemy finally gets the proof. And that’s the proof the Hashashin get when they steal what the Vatican doesn’t even know it has. Now the infallible decrees of two Twelfth Century popes and three kings, stolen by the Hashashin, threaten to catapult the bigotry, bias, and religious blood baths of the Third Crusade straight into the Twenty-First Century. When Templars Sean Callahan and Marie Curtis are drawn into the mess, they face an ancient enemy that has already nearly won the battle, a newly elected Mexican pope being undermined by entrenched Vatican powers, world class scholars who will sell their prestige to the highest bidder, and terrorists lingering over lattes in sidewalk cafes. Moving from Rome to London, Switzerland, and Saudi Arabia, Callahan and Curtis are desperate to find some way to stem the success the Hashashin are having enlisting the majority of moderate Muslims in their Jihad. Out maneuvered at each step by the Hashashin, only a last ditch roll of the dice has any chance of success. But it’s the only chance they have.”If you loved the idea of Dan Brown’s bestsellers, but weren’t socrazy about all the arty esoterica, Terrence O’Brien’s The TemplarConcordat could hit your sweet spot….” Kindle Nation Daily “I loved this book and am still kicking myself for resisting its sirencall for so long. The history and details woven skillfully into the action and well rounded characters made for an exciting read…” -Sandra Gilbert 122,000 words – appx 400 pages

Inspired by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s account of a Soviet labor camp revolt in Gulag Archipelago, Volume III, the story of FORTY DAYS AT KAMAS follows political prisoners and security officials at a corrective labor camp in Kamas, Utah, where inmates seize control during the summer of 2024.SYNOPSIS:Kamas, Utah. 2024. In the totalitarian dystopia that America has become after the Unionist Party’s rise to power, the American West contains vast Restricted Zones dotted with ghost towns, scattered military garrisons and corrective labor camps where the regime disposes of its real and suspected enemies. Kamas is one such camp.On a frigid March night, a former businessman from Pittsburgh, Paul Wagner, arrives at a labor camp in Utah’s Kamas Valley, a dozen miles east of the deserted resort town of Park City, which prisoners are dismantling as part of a massive recycling project.When Wagner arrives, he is unaware that his eleven-year-old daughter, Claire, has set off to Utah to find him after becoming separated from her mother at the Philadelphia Airport. By an odd quirk of fate, Claire has traveled on the same train that carried her father into internal exile.Only after Wagner has renounced all hope of survival, cast his lot with anti-regime hard-liners and joined them in an unprecedented and suicidal revolt does he discover that Claire has become a servant in the home of the camp’s Deputy Warden. Wagner is torn between his devotion to family and loyalty to his fellow rebels until, on the eve of an armored assault intended to crush the revolt, he faces an agonizing choice between a hero’s death and a coward’s freedom.In FORTY DAYS AT KAMAS, author Preston Fleming offers a stirring portrait of a man determined to survive under the bleakest of conditions and against formidable odds. Fleming’s gift for evocative prose brings the characters and events to life in a way that arouses emotional tension while also engaging the reader’s intellect with fundamental questions about the future of American society.

In their very first adventure, Tommy and Tuppence uncover an audacious plot to destroy Great BritainIn postwar London, childhood friends Tommy Beresford and Prudence “Tuppence” Cowley are having a grand old time—except for the fact that they can barely afford a pot of tea between them. With no jobs to be had and no rich relations to bankroll them, they decide to form a joint venture: Young Adventurers, Ltd. They’re willing to go anywhere and do anything so long as the pay as right. Maybe, suggests Tuppence, a clergyman’s daughter, they’ll even get to steal a diamond necklace.Before Tommy can place their first advertisement, Tuppence gets a job offer. Mr. Whittington wants to send her to Paris for three months, all expenses paid. The catch is that she has to pretend to be someone else—an American—and she can’t talk to anyone she knows while she’s there. It sounds too good to be true, and when Tuppence tries to protect herself with a pseudonym—“Jane Finn,” an odd name that Tommy recently overheard—Whittington’s reaction is equal parts anger and admiration. Accusing Tuppence of blackmail, he gives her fifty pounds and disappears.Of course, the Young Adventurers refuse to leave it at that. Setting out to find the mysterious Jane Finn, they stumble into a deadly conspiracy that stretches all the way back to the sinking of the Lusitania and now threatens to undo everything England won in the Great War.By transforming two of London’s bright young things into fearless detectives, Agatha Christie’s second novel revolutionized the mystery genre.This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.

Code name: JetTwenty-eight-year-old Jet was once the Mossad’s most lethal operative before faking her own death and burying her Israeli intelligence identity forever.But the past doesn’t give up on its secrets easily.When her new life on a tranquil island is shattered by a brutal attack, Jet must return to a clandestine existence of savagery and deception to save herself and those she loves. A gritty, unflinching roller-coaster of high-stakes twists and shocking turns, JET features a new breed of protagonist that breaks the mold.Fans of Lisbeth Salander, SALT, and the Bourne trilogy will find themselves carried along at Lamborghini speed to a conclusion as jarring and surprising as the story’s heroine is unconventional.This is the first* novel in the JET series. The series is composed of the following books:JET – Ops Files (prequel) JET – Ops Files, Terror Alert (prequel)JET *JET – BetrayalJET – VengeanceJET – ReckoningJET – LegacyJET – JusticeJET – Sanctuary JET – SurvivalJET – Escape + + +Q & A w/ Russell BlakeQ: How would you describe JET?Russell: The elevator pitch? Kill Bill meets Bourne. The longer version would be that JET follows the saga of a young woman who thought she had left a brutal covert life behind her, but finds herself having to go back into that world when she is attacked by enemies from her past.Q: How does JET differ from your other novels?R: I’ve never written anything nearly as lightning-paced. It’s completely and joyously over the top in the way a Bond film is. I wanted this to read like being in a Scarab, slamming through the waves at ninety miles per hour – a rush that just doesn’t stop. I’m really happy with the way it turned out. But having said that, what’s weird about JET is that even though it’s brimming with action, crafting artful prose was a priority for me, and I think I struck a balance that’s unusual and evocative. Whatever it is, it seems to work,Q: JET’s character is different than the other female protagonists you’ve written. What inspired her?R: I got this idea when I was writing Silver Justice for a total kick-ass, take-no-prisoners, over the top female operative – sort of a female Jack Bauer crossed with James Bond, but way more deadly. From that idea came the seeds of an incredible story with more twists and surprises than I’ve ever tried for. But it also has a different sensibility. If there’s such a thing as literary fiction action thrillers, I guess this might be it.Q: Why the Mossad?R: I wanted something that was exotic and had the reputation as highly effective, but wanted to avoid the usual CIA or KGB operative. And she’s way too no-nonsense for MI6. That didn’t leave a lot of choices. So the Mossad it was. I’d written an ex-Mossad operative once before in The Voynich Cypher & I think I sort of automatically leaned in that direction, and before I knew it the book was written.Q: Your work has been described as cinematic. Why?R: That’s how I think. I see each episode or scene in my head, and then I write what I see. I try to provide enough depth so the reader is with me, but not so much that page flipping to get to the next good part is required. But I see each chapter as a scene – it’s just how my brain works. I’m a creation of a modern world, raised on images and films, so I think that naturally affects my storytelling. Certainly the JET books are. Mission Impossible comes to mind.Q: Will there be more JET?R: Absolutely. The series is now up to eight novels, including the prequel to this one, JET – Ops Files, which lays out how it all began. How many more JET novels will there be? Hard to say. When I get tired of writing them I’ll be sure to let everyone know…Q: You mention Kill Bill and Bourne. How is JET similar?R: I loved Tarantino’s take because it was so completely overblown in every way. Deliberately so. I wanted JET to read like that film played, but with a story more like Bourne.